Top 3 Client Pain Points | 7 Figure Annuity Sales Podcast | Ep. 141

Hey, everyone. Chad Owen, the annuity sales coach. And we have some exciting topics to talk about today. Even though I have no idea what we're talking about. But as Caleb says, no matter what I'm. Oh, that's perfect. That's right. So let's just jump right into what's going to be perfect and what's going to be right. Go ahead.

I want to give them three pain points to hit in their appointments.

Okay.

Okay.

But do not want to laser finger with a hammer.

That's a good idea.

Do not close your hand in the door and do not let a dumb little dog come out and bite your boot, because that actually has happened straight through my boot into my toe.

Those are all pain points for the agent I did.

I controlled so well not to kick that dog from the front door. Oh, it was proud of that self control. Well, she lost her husband, so I had to not kill her dog. That would have been bad. Okay, so let's go into real pain points outside of sales.

Yeah, specifically. Specifically in the appointment process. Okay. If you're an agent, you can hit on certain pain points that your clients might have. I want to highlight three that I know you use, but I really want to cast this banner as well of we're not using pain points to conjure fear because I think that could be something that it can be muddied, if that makes sense. It can be really easy to start thinking, well, I don't want to use pain points because I don't want to conjure fear. No, you can use pain points without conjuring fear.

Well, the difference is one you're trying to conjure fear. The other you're just stating facts.

It's truth.

That's all you're doing.

Right.

Are you concerned about market volatility? Yeah, that's a pain. That is a pain point that has nothing to do with fear. I'm trying to see what is their tolerance of market volatility.

Right.

So it's just more of an information kind of logic, you know, gathering information gathering. But by no means. Yeah. Is that one of them.

That was actually the first one. Market risk. Market volatility, the ups and the downs and all arounds. And I want to keep in mind too that we've got, we have advisors that listen to the podcast because they're insurance licensed and they're positioning annuities as well. And so one of the things that, that as an insurance only agent that I'm sure that kind of allows you to kind of feed on kind of this dichotomy between the two. Right. This kind of. This gap between the risk side and the safe money side is the idea of market risk. So how do you actually use that pain point in a way that doesn't conjure fear?

Well, so I will just go back into what are your thought process? Well, first of all, you have the plan for living, plan for dying. Because that tells me, you know, what. What is the money for? Then, of course, now I know once the money's for, and I ask that question, are you willing to lose all of your money, some of your money, or none of your money? That's really a question that's telling me, yeah, is it a risk tolerance? But if somebody says, well, die, I don't want to lose any of my money, that tells me they don't want to lose any of their money. So nothing there obviously is talking about fear or anything like that. It's just they don't want to lose it. Then it allows me to say, well, if you're concerned about not losing any of your money, why is all your money in stocks, bonds and mutual funds? Now, for our variable people, I totally get that. As long as you're. I don't have problem with variable people if they do the job. Right. Right. So in other words, don't ever try and plan for guaranteed income for life if you're using a variable product, and that includes a straight indexed annuity. Right. I mean, I see some agents trying to, well, the markets performed in this indexed annuity, 7% over the past 10 years. So we can pull out six, and you should be fine the rest of your life. No, that is not the case. That's why income riders have a rider charge on it, because it does have to have some sort of reinsurance in essence, to cover if they do live to 100 years. Right. So if you're saying, are you wanting to lose all of your money, some of your money, or none of your money? That's telling me right there, what is their pain point? What is their risk tolerance? And then somebody may say, why want to lose some of it? And go, really, your age right now, you're 65 years old and you're willing to have a market dip. Well, no, not really. Okay, so what we need to do, we need to distinguish how much is important for protecting right now for income, for life, and then how much is kind of your gambling money. And I will say gambling money because it is. Nobody can tell me that risk money is not gambling money. It is. I mean, you have Gamestop stock That goes crazy for what? For a weird reason. You have the dogecoin or whatever, it just goes through the roof once again because one guy tweeted something and it goes crazy. So I mean, we see stocks rise and fall off of tweets. Right. So you can't tell me it's based off of financial stability or actual facts about the stock or the mutual fund. It's a very volatile situation. Absolutely. So you know, when you're talking about pain point, how, how adverse are they to they fine with a 20, 30, 40% loss in the market and sometimes you get people, they're still fine with that.

Right.

That is not my client. That's not who I'm there to help.

Right.

So if I, I never try and force convince someone I'm protecting their money. Right.

They need to want to protect their money.

Now if their life says stake, I mean, if I see somebody walking towards the cliff and I can tackle you and make sure you don't go to that cliff, that's one thing.

Sure.

But if you're going to jump off the, the stock market cliff, it's your money. I can't even grab that. So it's your choice.

Absolutely. I think too though, I think clients a lot of times kind of buy into this mindset that they, they have to be okay with some level of risk because that's all they've ever known, really. I mean, you think about outside of, outside of just putting your money away in a bank or some type of CD or some other fixed type of safe money product, quote unquote, most of their experience and their exposure is to some level of risk. And it's that idea of all you got to risk money to make money.

Well, it is, but the reality is I've always been exposed to some sort of risk tolerance with my body. You know, teen, teen years, twenties, thirties, and unfortunately, I hate to say even in my forties, so all the way to my forties, I still take way too much risk for my body. The last few times I've been hurt really bad and how long it took me to recover, I'm. That risk tolerance is going down a lot. Right. You know, I just, you can't, I can't recover the way I used to.

Right.

And it's. Yeah, it is the same concept. I mean, you, you know, 14 year olds don't know what that's like.

That's funny.

That would be. No, it isn't because you married my daughter and 14 would be disgusting. But anyway, so. But I mean, you even at Your age can handle recovery a lot quicker than I can. And man, it's sometimes now I get hurt and I'm just like taking a week to rebound from the pain. And you know, stock market is the same way, Right. You know, you can't treat your money the same way. You did it when you're in 20. So to say I've always done it this way doesn't make sense.

Right.

So.

Well, and I think that that question you ask too there, when you ask, are you willing to risk some of your money, all of your money or.

None of your money?

Right. All of your money, some of your money, none of it. Right. It goes to all, all to none. But I think that question is really good. I think that you can even follow that up too. And I don't know if you've ever done this, but if they say, well, yeah, I'm willing to risk some of your money, it's like, no, not, not. What do you expect? What are you willing to lose? What do you want to lose? Are you okay?

Well, because there will be people's. Well, the markets always went up. So from 2000 to 2013, was the market up? No. So don't tell me the markets always went up. Does the market steadily go up? Yes, but it depends on when the reality is, and everybody knows this right now, even some of the best economists in the world right now can't figure out what's going on with the market. I mean, I follow a lot and you get one saying that it's gonna blow through the roof and you got another one that's screaming doom and gloom. So I mean, and they're both super intelligent and all these people I listen to are a lot smarter than I am in global economics. So why is one screaming Chicken Little and the other one screaming, you know you're gonna win this lottery, right? I don't know. And they can't give me a logical reason behind it.

Well, and it's, it's crazy too because you think about the fact that yes, social media can drive and move the market. Like, I mean, you want to talk about unpredictable, I mean, if it's emotion based so often, emotion based what happens in there, it's, it's crazy. So that's a real pain point. The other one and kind of the second one that I, that I was thinking through was the idea of fees. High fees is another pain point. I mean, people are essentially paying for X something, but that something on the risk side very rarely if ever actually creates any type of guarantee.

Well, that's the reality. I don't think people really have a problem with a fee that does something for them.

Right.

I think the problem is, is when you pay a fee and you have no guarantees. Like if I have a rider fee that costs 1% but it guarantees me income for life, that's a guarantee. But if I have a broker fee that's 1%, what does that guarantee you? Right. I use this analogy, I say, you know, if you had this truck driver, you had them take you from Austin to Denver and they were moving your stuff, but halfway along the road they dumped out 50% of the stuff they were delivering to you, would you still pay them? Well, no. Well, what happens when you're going from your 60 to 65 and you want to retire but halfway on that trip you lost 50% of your stock?

Right.

Why are you still. Why do they still get paid? Yeah, that doesn't. And the reality, and we know this and brokers know this, there's very little active manage in management in any of small brokerage account. Sure. You usually set at one particular account, let it go. And every time you see, you'll see sometimes people, people moving money around. But the reality is most of it is an age based, a risk tolerance based account that just sits there and gets moved around by the computer system, not the actual broker going in. Why research the stock? And I think this is going to be best. No, you only have $20,000 in here. You know, it just. We know it doesn't work that way. And I have plenty of brokers that I mentor and plenty of brokers that are very intelligent, very, very. I mean some of These guys have 100 million under management. Absolutely. And they tell me, nope, Chad, that is true. And they've been with mult brokerage houses. They know what they're talking about. So when I get a brand new broker that's straight off and they're going, no, well, my institution doesn't do that. Yeah, come and talk to me in five years. Actually come and talk to me in five months and you'll see that is not the case.

Sure.

So yeah, well, fees are a killer for retirement when they don't do anything for the person.

It's true. And I know the way that you often bring up the idea of fees is actually when you're just explaining products.

Right.

Like you're explaining the way an FIA works and they may ask a question about well, or you see that they're in a variable annuity or they're in stocks, bonds, mutual funds or some Kind of brokerage account or whatever. And now it brings in that juxtaposition about the fees. Because if you're, if you're an insurance agent positioning a safe money product like an FIA with some type of rider fee on it, and you're bad mouthing fees, but now they have it. You have to be able to explain the difference between the two. You have to be able to illustrate that and show them why this fee creates a guarantee. This one does not create a guarantee.

I don't know if it. And it's not even bad mouthing a fee. I mean, to me it all comes to fee with a purpose.

That's true.

You know, that's just the reality of one reality. Yeah. It's not, it's not trying to undercut or belittle something or praise and encourage something. It's just this is a fact.

Right.

This is a fee that you pay whether you're winning or losing.

Right.

That doesn't make sense to me. This is a fee that has a very specific purpose. I'm fine with that. Right. So it's just once again, stating facts. The problem in sales is you think you have to put your opinion into thing. The reality is give them the facts and let them make the decision.

Right.

That's how 99% of my sales go. Yeah. So it's true.

You're not a hard salesman, you're not a hard closer. And that pays dividends.

It does. Number three.

The number three one was the idea of outliving their retirement funds.

That is a huge one. There's multiple studies going around right now that people are more afraid of outliving their income than they are of dying.

Right.

And that's the reality. I mean, that's just a fact that you have. I've lost count of the number of people that have done those studies and my clients say the same thing. I mean, would you rather worry about when you're gonna die or worry about when you're gonna outlive your income? Well, when you're gonna die, you're gonna die. I mean, there's not much you can do about that is death. But outliving your income while you're still alive, that can affect a lot of things greatly. I mean, it can change, it can cause death. I mean, the reality is if you can't go and do what you would normally do because you don't have the money, and then you just sit around your house all day and do nothing, there's nobody out there that can't tell me or without Will tell me that that doesn't cause your lifespan to be shortened.

Right.

I've seen people that were super sharp that because of a health situation or money situation, they just don't do as much. And when you see them later and then later and then later you see their brain deteriorating.

Right.

They just don't have the same passion, the drive, they don't have the same logic. It's just, it is a fact. Running out of income is a killer.

It is.

And don't use it as that. Like oh, if you run I income, you're going to die. No, that's not. But the reality is it's a stress and rocking chairs. I mean if you have not bought me a book, I'm telling you, stressrocking chairs.com you can order books. If you order in bulk, you can get a lot better deal on it. And remember I sold 27 million in annuities right now. I am not making a bunch of money off of books, I promise you that. But you know, there is cost to riding them, maintaining them. But the reality is the stress everybody worries about and that causes health issues. I know when I'm on vacation, I'm taking the same amount of insulin. But my all sudden I wake up with much lower numbers. Why I am not stressed, I'm relaxed. But when I'm working same amount of insulin, my numbers are harder to control. And I'm eating the same thing too. I'm actually eating worse when I'm on vacation. And I just this just happen. I woke up with a blood sugar of 59 and I didn't even know what was going on because my blood sugar was so low. I was on vacation. Why I was totally relaxed. So the stress absolutely will cause problems. And then the rocking chairs. Yeah. Whether it's because of medical issue or you just don't have the money, anybody knows, you sit your yourself down and you rock yourself away. Rock your life away. You're. You're going to have, you're going to deteriorate, sedentary. So yep, it's true.

Well and I love this because again these three pain points, you're talking about market risk, you're talking about high fees, you're talking about outliving your retirement funds. All three of those things, they get overcome, so to speak. They get solved via a fixed indexed annuity with an income.

Right.

If that's the best for their situation, use it. Talk about these pain points. And again, it's just having a conversation. It's not conjuring fear. You're just talking about the reality of certain situations.

I always say it over and over again, never sell from fear, from a standpoint of safety. So I hope this helps you. You have a great day and of course, happy selling.